Reid Warner

@reid-warner

Hi everyone – has anyone lost a dog recently? We’re at 206 Bates and have been seeing what appears to be a lost dog on and off our property for the past three days. It’s a reddish male dog, 40-50lbs and looks like a pit bull/boxer mix possibly. He is wearing an orange collar and appears to have tags, but runs off at high speed if we even open a…[Read more]

Also – to be clear, we still have dial tone on our phone line during the two power outages we’ve experienced today, but DSL dies. I think this implies the CL equipment up here is not on back up generators. Hence, my comments about the need for a secondary connection.

I apologize for not posting something sooner as this has been on my to do list for awhile, but thanks to a bunch of previous legwork our good neighbor Kyle did, I was able to reach a regional Director for CL in Vancouver and improve our DSL connection quite a bit. Much of it is based on where you are, as others have mentioned. We moved to Bates…[Read more]

Also – to be clear, we still have dial tone on our phone line during the two power outages we’ve experienced today, but DSL dies. I think this implies the CL equipment up here is not on back up generators. Hence, my comments about the need for a secondary connection.

I wanted to reply back so that anyone else who might need garage door help in the future has a contact. We used Butch at Gorge Doors out of Hood River. Gorgedoors.com or 541-380-0650. He determined our install was done incorrectly and repositioned the door to keep tension on the spools…and didn’t charge us anything for it. We’ll definitely…[Read more]

Does anyone have a contractor reference that might be able to help us with a tall garage door in a shop? The thing basically came off it’s rails tonight and is coming apart quickly. It’s jammed in place halfway down, and it’s a bit beyond my skill level. I believe it wasn’t framed up properly in the first place and will need some modifications…[Read more]

I wanted to reply back so that anyone else who might need garage door help in the future has a contact. We used Butch at Gorge Doors out of Hood River. Gorgedoors.com or 541-380-0650. He determined our install was done incorrectly and repositioned the door to keep tension on the spools…and didn’t charge us anything for it. We’ll definitely…[Read more]

Hi Katie – I just noticed the same thing. On Monday afternoon we were driving home and saw a llama walking down Snowden. The guy behind us pulled over and we decided to go door to door and see if we could figure out who’s it was. The first house (402 Snowden) turned out to be the home “Heidi” the llama came from. The lady who lived there, her…[Read more]

Yes….this Major Creek/Catherine Creek is quite a wildlife corridor.
We have identified as many as 7 different bear in a season on our property. Another family on Bates counted 13 different bear on their field.

Hi neighbors! Thought you’d all like to see some trail cam footage of a bear that’s been cruising around Bates Rd. lately. There are a couple of middle of the night still shots and a morning video here: https://1drv.ms/f/s!Aik2HXaVWOdogeFDzSZjZumHxhbjDg

It could be the same bear we saw Friday afternoon right ON Bates just coming off our property (225). The one we saw may have been a bit bigger. We’ve also seen him twice on the north side of our property, also during the day. Don’t have our trail cameras up so far.

Yes….this Major Creek/Catherine Creek is quite a wildlife corridor.
We have identified as many as 7 different bear in a season on our property. Another family on Bates counted 13 different bear on their field.

Very cool photos. Thanks for sharing. I’ve seen a bear like that cross the road once last year and once this spring – near the fire station, and I saw it once last year while hiking across the street from my house (27 Bates).

He came to visit a couple nights this weekend on Nash Rd. right before garbage pick up and decorated our hillside. Also carted off a 30 gallon trash can with 40lbs of chicken feed in it. Didn’t bother any of the animals though.

This (June 8 ) morning, encountered a medium-sized black bear (looked a bit bigger than the one in Reid’s video) standing about 200 feet away on the SDS road south of Bates/west of Tunnel. We stared each other down for at least a minute before it finally slowly turned to amble off into the woods eastward towards Tunnel. After walking the w…[Read more]

I almost hit the little dog yesterday on Snowden – coming straight up the middle of the downhill lane probably 100′ downhill of their driveway. I was driving a truck downhill and while I wasn’t doing 50mph it was challenging to get stopped as the uphill lane was occupied. I thought that little dog was “car smart”, but he made no effort to get…[Read more]

Hi, Reid:
Sounds sadly so familiar. A couple months ago, both dogs chased my pickup downhill virtually the entire length between the two 20 mph curve signs. Although I was only going about 30 mph, they were actually able to keep up! While potentially hitting one of them is an understandable concern, I think a greater one is the potential…[Read more]

Just wanted to provide an update here – we’re in the “200” block of Bates and were able to get the upgrade working today. After several speed tests averages were very closed to 10Mbps down and 700-800k up. Definitely not 1Mbps up, but better than the 256k previously. The previous owners are still there as we aren’t physically moving in until…[Read more]

That’s pretty awesome bandwidth – didn’t realize satellite had that sort of throughput. My issue with satellite is the data cap which is very low, and the lack of VPN support for work. Otherwise I’d thought about getting it as a backup service, but I think I’m going to focus on trying to improve the LTE signal with an antenna and amplifier like…[Read more]

Hi Roy – I don’t know if there is a diagram, however I would really recommend going to the CL site and plugging in your address and see what happens. I did this a couple of months ago with ours and nothing was available, then yesterday I could order the 10Mbps broadband.

For anyone interested in getting more involved in this issue, the next regional meeting of the Gorge Broadband Consortium will be Friday, February 10, at 10 a.m. in The Dalles. Exact location to be determined. The meeting will include updates on upcoming projects and legislation. For more information, contact Carrie Pipinich at the Mid-Columbia…[Read more]

Hi – we recently purchased a place on Bates Road and my intent was to be able to work remotely from there. I’m a 20+ year technology veteran. I understand and have read some notes about Broadband being installed for the area, but it seems CenturyLink might be behind schedule at this point. In the interim I’ve decided to rent an office in White…[Read more]

Here is what I have heard from CentufyLink. As of Jan 11 they had 133 houses deployed of the 450 or so houses to be included in this project. They are deploying in phases. They have a phase called Bates Rd and Tunnel Rd mid node#1 that they estimate will be complete on Jan 31st. I’m not sure exactly what area is included in this.…[Read more]

For anyone interested in getting more involved in this issue, the next regional meeting of the Gorge Broadband Consortium will be Friday, February 10, at 10 a.m. in The Dalles. Exact location to be determined. The meeting will include updates on upcoming projects and legislation. For more information, contact Carrie Pipinich at the Mid-Columbia…[Read more]

Hi Reid — Do you know if there is any schematic/map for which houses are included in this phase? My understanding (though possibly incomplete or wrong…) is the telephone lines must be digitized and when that happens within X miles of a residence the residence can obtain DSL. We’re on Snowden and would dearly love to ditch the satellite……[Read more]

Hi Roy – I don’t know if there is a diagram, however I would really recommend going to the CL site and plugging in your address and see what happens. I did this a couple of months ago with ours and nothing was available, then yesterday I could order the 10Mbps broadband.

Hi, Kyle: I just checked on the CL map and 858 Snowden has nothing available right now. Bummer. How did you hear about these phases? Do you have a contact number to get a bit more information? We have been working on this for several years and are pretty discouraged. Thanks for a bit of hope. Kathy & Jim 493-2246

I was pushing pretty hard on the broadband topic last year and I ended up meeting some folks at the CenturyLink building in Seattle. This deployment is part of the CAF II funds which falls under their regulatory affairs director. This is just one of many CAF builds they are working on so I try to avoid over doing contact to the…[Read more]

10mb/s is 10/8 MB/s. Or about one megabyte/second. The numbers phone companies give you are always in megabits. There are 8 megabits in a megabyte. They do that to make the numbers look bigger. They know most people see 10mb/s and think that means ten megabytes per second. That’d be nice, but it’s eight-fold far from the truth. I get 1MB/s…[Read more]

That’s pretty awesome bandwidth – didn’t realize satellite had that sort of throughput. My issue with satellite is the data cap which is very low, and the lack of VPN support for work. Otherwise I’d thought about getting it as a backup service, but I think I’m going to focus on trying to improve the LTE signal with an antenna and amplifier like…[Read more]

Jim: According to CL the Acme/Snowden box upgrade should be completed by March. When we met with CL in August last year they told us that they were only upgrading as far as the Acme/Snowden. They also told us that the effective range of the DSL broadband service would only be 10,000 feet from the box–so you should be good at your place. I…[Read more]

Duncan: I believe you are at 80 Bates Rd. You should be able to call CenturyLink customer service 877-862-9343 (or go online) and order internet services. Our friend lives at 37 Bates and got hooked up last December. Should be that straight-forward. Be forewarned, CL customer service is really bad. It took our friend 4 calls and 2 missed…[Read more]

Reid, I own a place at 80 Bates Rd. I would be 100% interested if it matters to CL. I went to their website and learned that my address is eligible for 3 mbps download. Not sure how to add my name to the list…. Saw Dawn’s email and I will be at the meeting on Feb 10 in The Dalles.

Hello All, Steve and Sharon here (986 Snowden Rd). We wanted to add some further comments to the above regarding the continuing Broadband Saga. First, with regard to speeds. Note that Scott See is absolutely correct when he clarifies speeds in MBS vs speeds in Mbs–(Notice the big B, vs the small b in the description) A Byte–big B–equals 8…[Read more]

Thanks for all the info!! Our place is out Acme-no house there yet. But I did buy a cell phone booster meant for a car or truck that I use with a battery (the little antenna is on the cabin roof). It sure helps!! I go from text only capability to 3G if it’s plugged in-on Verizon. Just tossing it in there that a larger house size cell booster…[Read more]

I am surely interested in the cell phone booster idea. I see that some of the more powerful ones say that are meant for large square footage building …..or for RURAL REMOTE areas. Does anybody else have experience (especially on Bates Road) using such a booster. $800-$900 is a lot of money if it isn’t even going to work here. I’d love to know more!

Judy: We tried the booster alternative up at our place (986 Snowden) and found that it just did not work well. There are many articles out there on them, but bottom line a cell phone booster only works when you are already getting a consistent signal. At a minimum you would want at least 2 bars ALL THE TIME. The booster can not boost a non…[Read more]

I have had good luck with a cell booster over on Tunnel. Without the booster I can only get calls out on the top floor of my house and little to no data. With it installed I have never lost a call anywhere in my house and I get reliable 4G LTE, usually test out around 15mbps on a speed test.

Judy, I just (week ago) installed the weBoost Connect 4G. My service (AT&T) went from dropped calls always to dropped calls never and MUCH faster download on LTE. Best $549 I ever spent. It’s a little tedious to set up. You can drop by to see what my wife and I did if needed. Let me know if so.

Just wanted to provide an update here – we’re in the “200” block of Bates and were able to get the upgrade working today. After several speed tests averages were very closed to 10Mbps down and 700-800k up. Definitely not 1Mbps up, but better than the 256k previously. The previous owners are still there as we aren’t physically moving in until…[Read more]